


The Romantic Novelist

by nonky



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 03:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17891033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: Prompt by modestroad on LJ: Castle/Beckett, "How many Nikki Heat books are you going to write anyway?"





	The Romantic Novelist

Beckett glanced around the room, shoved her endless paperwork out of the way, and planted her elbows on her desk. She leaned into her clasped hands in an almost innocent gesture, fixing Castle with an expression of perverse admiration.

"When do you plan to kill me," she asked. "You planned Derek Storm's demise years in advance; you were just salivating to shoot him up. So when is it Nikki Heat's turn?"

He grinned, admiring how she made even the portrait studio pose entrancing. His chair scraped a little on the floor as he shifted to sit up from his slouch.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Kate. Nikki Heat is destined for something much more terrifying and far-reaching than a gunshot. She's going to lose her badge, open a detective agency with Rook, fall in love with him, marry him and have writer babies. I think I've laid out the character arc very clearly in the first two novels."

"They've had sex twice in six hundred pages, Castle, I don't know why you think she'd choose him," she replied firmly.

His hands darted to her pen and grabbed it, sketching a plot outline in a few lines on a post it. Only long practice reading his scribbled notes allowed Beckett to pick out any of the words.

"Because she loses her badge over him, trying to protect him, and not only does Nikki not hate Rook - she thinks he was worth it," Castle's eyes sparkled at her as he smirked.

"He gets her fired and knocked up and she thinks it's all great?! Castle!"

He shook his head, and said sternly, "Now, now, he only gets her pregnant after they're married; that's hardly a typical knocking up. They go respectable together and they both realize they like the stability. It's a love story, Beckett, and it always has been."

She fell back into her seat, hands fluttering nervously at her sweater. Beckett ducked her face away until the worst of her blush had faded, then challenged Castle again.

"So after they have the kid Nikki Heat is just a mom," she asked caustically. "Not very progressive. How many Nikki Heat books are you going to write, anyway?"

"Ah, but this is another six to eight books away, so if you factor one year of her life per book, Nikki will be in her early 40s by then," he told her, batting at a sandy lock of hair over his eye. "Pfft, I need a haircut."

Without missing a beat, she plucked a sticky note off her computer screen and handed it to him. The note reminded them both of her promise to let him off work early the next day so he could visit his barber.

"Right," he nodded, tapping the note back where it had been. "Anyway, as I was saying, Nikki and Rook saved a lot of people, saw a lot of rough things. They deserve to move on to something more peaceful. And in a few years I can nudge the timeline a little and introduce Sadie Rook, daughter of the world-renowned New York detectives and NYPD's most precocious rookie!"

"You have an answer for everything, don't you Castle?"

He slouched back in a comfortable recline, looking infinitely pleased with the world. "I am the omniscient narrator," he said easily. "And Sadie would be one hell of a kid."


End file.
